THE RENAISSANCE 151 



The first requisite of the modern world as it emerged 

 from chaos was authority, and it proved to a great 

 extent that those who have the power of marshalling 

 men have also the power of marshalling thoughts. 

 The feudal system grouped men on an administrative 

 basis, depositing authority with those strains of 

 blood which had shown themselves competent to 

 exercise it. The ecclesiastical organization was but 

 one aspect of the art of government, but one method 

 of organizing and directing the activities of the whole 

 community. If the more ambitious and active mem- 

 bers of the administrative classes usually found their 

 scope in military and civil occupations, and established 

 great families to perpetuate their hereditary talents, 

 the more thoughtful, more acute, or more contempla- 

 tive frequently entered the service of the Church, 

 where at first learning of whatever kind, legal, medical 

 and scientific, was concentrated, living in conditions 

 of celibacy that probably circumscribed its develop- 

 ment. Broadly speaking, the higher territorial families 

 of England have supplied her with administrators, 

 and the more numerous lesser gentry and yeomen 

 furnished the doctors, lawyers and the men of science. 

 Geographically speaking, the West and South of 

 England sent the critics, the philosophers and the 

 future administrators of England to Oxford, while 

 the East Anglian area supplied to Cambridge the 

 imaginative qualities, shown alike by scientific insight 

 and poetical genius, in a long line of men of science and 

 poets. 



By the end of the eighteenth century, the social 

 area from which most frequently the workers in 

 science were drawn had begun to increase. It is an 



